I doubt that many Americans would disagree that the country’s conversation about gay rights is far more mature and considered than it was two decades ago.

Today, there exists broad understanding that homosexual people are unavoidable and common, present in all corners and demographics of American life. Through education, and especially exposure, homosexuality is no longer regarded as bizarre, threatening, or mysterious. Even if we remain unsure about what makes a minority of men and women gay, only the tiniest fringe still consider the orientation something worth trying to “fix.” When states attempt to ban homosexual “conversion therapy,” as California is trying to do at the moment, it feels like anachronistic performance. Disinterest in judging homosexuality is not an attitude government has coerced Americans into, it is the product of a free people’s informed knowledge.

To the extent that America is still having any political debate about homosexuality, it has evolved into a more substantial conversation about religious liberty. Motivated by their constitutionally protected freedom of belief, today some Christians seek assurance of their right to opt out of participating in activities they see as condoning or endorsing homosexual acts or behavior — chiefly same-sex weddings — which are considered destructive to both the individual and broader society. These are difficult debates but are also far more useful than those of earlier eras, which mostly centered on demagogic judgment of the gay “lifestyle” untethered to any tangible constitutional principle or policy objective.

Looking at the state of America’s transgender debate, I often wonder if things are destined to unfold in a similar way.

At present, it feels we’re still in the immature, demagogic phase. In some quarters, it remains fashionable to act theatrically repulsed by transgender people, emphasize their weirdness, and make populist appeals to the preposterousness of women asking to be called “him” or surgeons amputating penises and so forth. Yet this seems more cathartic than anything, in the same way that showy judgment of gays did a generation earlier. As with homosexuality in the 1980s and ’90s, the loud revulsion of critics conceals a fading interest in actually attempting to “solve” transgenderism, as even those most offended by it seem to quietly regard purported cures as quackish and authoritarian.

Though transgenderism is a far rarer phenomenon than homosexuality, I think most adults could admit it does seem like a rather persistent aspect of humanity. Most can probably recall a transgender person making at least some minor appearance in their life. If we concede that transgenderism is not going away, and is not something anyone intends to exert effort toward ending, then Americans, especially conservative ones, should reflect on our culture’s honest and fair attitude toward homosexuality and acknowledge that the most sensible path out of the present acrimony will probably require similar compromise. Some degree of cultural ceasefire and consensus seems the only path for both sides to maintain a degree of pride while avoiding a more radical, disruptive societal transformation.

Part one of the compromise will be borne by cultural conservatives and traditionalists. It asks for broad tolerance for the reality that transgender men and women exist, and are entitled to basic human dignity, just like everyone else. This does not mean having to morally endorse behavior many may believe runs contrary to God’s plan for a just and healthy society, but it does imply that acts like ostentatiously calling people by pronouns they don’t want, or belittling their personal struggle, are boorish and petty. It means acknowledging that arbitrary discrimination against transgender people is a cruel bigotry like any other.

But part two of the compromise requires sacrifice on the part of progressives, who are currently overplaying their hand in an effort to strong-arm sweeping social change as a flex of their power. There must be a halt in the use of state authority to impose accommodation of transgenderism in a fashion far more totalitarian than is rationally justified. Transgender people constitute a tiny minority of Americans who, in the vast majority of cases, are explicitly eager to opt into the broad two-gender social order our civilization is based around.
Tolerance does not necessitate a purge of any and all public manifestations of the gender binary in the name of extreme exceptions to the rule.

Transgenderism seems to be the issue on which many on the right prefer to let loose their inner reactionary, which then further rationalizes petty tyranny on the left.

Accepting transgenderism as an inescapable human phenomenon does not mean that there is nothing left to learn about it or that cautious or even skeptical attitudes toward purported manifestations of it are never legitimate. In particular, the risk of psychologically and physically damaging children by encouraging or enabling them to embrace transgender identities before pubescence must be acknowledged as a valid concern backed by credible evidence. Protecting children from the confusing, anxious, dangerous world of adult sexuality and sexual identity before their developing minds can fully conceptualize its complexities is not bigotry, it is good sense, and the sovereign right of every parent. It should be the responsibility of the public education system as well.

[Nonsense. You’ve already demanded and gotten surrender to your gay agenda. Normal people will have to plead with you to represent them against sexual psychopaths, lest they be ruined by YOUR allies.]

Today’s purveyors of identity politics [Like you?] cause acrimony because they seem determined to invent and prosecute new accusations of intolerance against those otherwise trying hard to behave properly. [But you have destroyed the whole notion of “behaving properly”!] Embracing open prejudice can seem a cynically comforting response among those feeling doomed to be judged regardless. Because transgenderism affects few people, and therefore provokes relatively low social stigma, it seems to be the issue on which many on the right prefer to let loose their inner reactionary, which then further rationalizes petty tyranny on the left.

[So-called transgenderism affects everyone—bathrooms, paying for butchery, indoctrinating our children, destroying the First amendment, etc. And if you can’t virulently opposed to “transgenderism,” you can’t be virulently opposed to anything.]

11

American history teaches that it is neither the radical nor the regressive who are ultimately vindicated in their response to cultural disruption, but rather those cautious conservatives who assign themselves the difficult task of thoughtfully working through the new and unexpected in the cause of preserving a social order as peaceful and free as the one that came prior.

bvoyelr
8 hours ago
My only concern with transgenderism is that it's clearly not "just another trait that some humans have." It currently has all of the markers of a pretty severe mental illness -- something like 40% of trans people attempt suicide some time in their lives. Progressives would have us believe that it's due to culture ostracizing them, but I think most would agree -- that is preposterous.

Thus, I primarily fight for a broad consensus about how transgenderism should be treated. The current trend is to move a person's meat around to look like their preferred gender (at great cost and often entailing permanent physical disability). This is profoundly dangerous, though if an individual wants to take that route and can afford it, more power to them. Medicine should encourage mental treatment to make the mind accept the body, not to force the body to match the mind. It's a more broadly accessible treatment option, it allows for much easier integration into society, and I believe it will ultimately prove to be a more effective treatment option (until such time as we have the medical technology to more dramatically change gender, which will happen eventually, but we're not there yet).

PunSalad
7 hours ago
Problem: Modern progressives do not brook compromise. They despise "tolerance" as unacceptable.

qultr
6 hours ago
This all sounds very reasonable, but it ignores the fact that sexuality is highly susceptible to cultural cues, and right now cultural cues send people, especially young people, in a lot of bad directions, both for themselves and for society at large. Transgenderism is not "fixed". It is something people choose. Right now it's something of a fad that pushes many young people in that direction even though it is not good for them--note the higher rates of suicide among such people. Same sex attraction similarly is certainly not fixed in all those who flirt with it as some would have us believe. These choices make a lot of difference in individual lives and consequently the cultural approach is really quite important. It's not just matter of live and let live when children are being pushed to make choices that harm them. The kind of simplistic analysis this article suggests is moreover contradicted by experience. The left is not about to live and let live. All must bow to its sexual religion or be destroyed. It would be nice if people could live and let live without pushing children to mutilate themselves That's unfortunately not how things tend to work.

csuprenant
5 hours ago
I'm not personally comfortable with transgenderism, or non-binary gender, or gender fluidity, or anything like that. My lack of comfort, however, does NOT preclude me from treating people who tell me they are transgender or "gender non-binary" respectfully and decently. If someone tells me that their personal pronouns are "they and them", I will make an effort to address them that way. If I'm harshly corrected for making a mistake in doing so, chances are that wasn't a friendship or relationship I was going to maintain anyway. I reserve the right to discriminate on the basis of someone being a jerk.

I agree with the commenter who noted that helping people find acceptance through mental health treatment should be primary, especially for children!!! I'm a married 58 year old woman with a very short haircut and who always wears sensible shoes. I was a tomboy as a kid back in the 1960s -- always preferring to play trucks or war or baseball rather than dolls. I am SOOOO grateful to my parents for gently and invisibly nudging me toward being who I was: a girl. While my Dad liked it when I mowed the lawn, my Mom liked it when I helped her cook or learned to sew. My parents had no "ideology" they could articulate other than the Catechism and their common sense. Their common sense told them that I needed to dress in girls' clothing and do at least some girl things. “No, you have to wear a dress today. I don’t care if you don’t like it!” Thank God for them.

If a child is born to “ultra progressive" parents, will they have the common sense to wait things out, to delay adult choices until the child is an adult — knowing that kids experiment and that most gender dysphoria is just a phase — or will they impose their own orthodoxy on a child? Sadly, having seen a video on "Desmond is Amazing", I know that at least some of them will. When I read a story about a parent (like “Desmond is Amazing”’s mother) nurturing their child's childish desire to be another gender, or refusing to let our conventional wisdom and experience on gender enter their child's life, I cringe. Accept a child’s experimentation, and gently guide them to be like the rest of us. Heck, even guide them to join clubs and teams, read, study, excel in school, learn new skills, make friends — there are plenty of things for parents to “parent” on — all those old things that made Americans and America great. Childhood is complicated enough, developing into a toddler, an elementary school kid, a teenager — they’re all complicated enough!

sonik
3 hours ago
Overall, well said. One of the keys is that there are so few transgender people - and some "pass" well enough that you wouldn't peg them as transgender anyway. So even if transgender people are granted full access to any bathroom they want, what's going to happen? Maybe a handful of times in the next 50 years of my life (God willing), I'll see someone in the ladies' room who doesn't really look like a lady. Then we'll both do our business, wash our hands, and never see each other again. Is this worth going to war over?

I know some people fear this could be abused - that men could take advantage by stalking or harassing girls in bathrooms while claiming they "identify as women." On that I'd say 1) I've never once heard of that happening, and you know Fox News would be all over it if it did. 2) Anyone harassing anyone in a bathroom (man on man, woman on woman, etc.) should be held accountable for the harassment itself. You don't need separate rules for transgender people.

I've always said this, about homosexuality too: I can't crawl inside another person's head and find out exactly what makes them how they are - whether they're "born that way," whether it's "real," etc. And that's not my job anyway. My job is to treat people with basic courtesy, regardless of my private thoughts about them, and that's what a lot of this adds up to.

kroneborge
2 hours ago
"'I've never once heard of that happening"
Do a quick google, it has happened

sonik
36 minutes ago
Found some of the incidents you might have in mind, but they all strike me as weak illustrations of the issue. In one, a (biological) man used the women's locker room and took off his shirt, understandably making people uncomfortable. He did defend his right to be there by saying he identified as a woman, so this is probably the best of the examples.

In another, a drunk man exposed himself in a women's restroom at Target. He did not claim to be transgender or cite any bathroom laws, though it seems some have tied the incident to this issue because Target has liberal rules about his bathrooms.

In an undeniably awful incident, a transgender "woman" raped a girl in a bathroom. However, this happened in a private house and had nothing to do with bathroom laws. Looks like that information was initially left out of some (right-leaning) reports.

Make of those what you will, but I'm unconvinced this is something to be alarmed about.

Of course the left is not interested in a cease fire. Just like with homosexuality, first it was civil unions, then gay marriage, now unless you are jubilant at the idea of gay marriage you will lose your business and/or job and be an outcast from society.

The left wants to apply the same BS to transgender.

Moreover, while I don't care what sex you think you are, or how you want to dress. I don't have to play along with your delusion.

Should we have to pretend along with the google employee that identifies as a dragon?

Finally of course I'm never going to be ok with men going into women's bathrooms just because they pretend to be a women.

NickInNC
2 hours ago
Although the LGBT movement ties them together, there are some significant differences between homosexuality and transgender behavior. There are some parts of this essay I agree with. People should be treated with compassion and respect, regardless of their sexual preference or how they view their gender. But there's a big difference between that and accepting something as normal and therefore not problematic. We should not support the idea that it's OK for someone to deny reality to the degree that they mutilate themselves trying to make their body into something it is not. The reality is that for 99.99% or more of the population, there are two distinct sexes, and you are one or the other. (There are extremely rare exceptions.) Denying the truth of this is like saying 2+2=5. It's not "cruel bigotry" to refuse to give in to the idea that gender is somehow "non-binary". I'll agree that it's wrong to be boorish and petty about it, but facts are facts. We can be compassionate and respect the dignity of people without rejecting the truth.

sonik
2 hours ago
Many forms of cosmetic surgery could be viewed as mutilation. There are lots of examples I find vain or gross or even self-destructive, but at the end of the day, it's none of my business. Adults get to make these choices, and doctors get to do the work as long as they fully inform the patient of what's involved. Same with surgery for transgender adults. You don't have to like it - but the questions are: what would you do about it, and how would you treat a person who'd had such a surgery, whatever your feelings might be? Aren't those the relevant questions?

(Disclaimer: The issue of underage kids having such procedures is certainly much more fraught.)

scuds_lonigan
2 hours ago
So JJ thinks our 'conversation' about gay rights is more mature than 20 years ago, huh?

I doubt it. There really is no conversation. So, let's have one.

Sex has a primal purpose that only heterosexual union can fulfill. Further, if we observe the physical changes that occur during sexual arousal, it shows that nature FACILITATES heterosexual couplings.

It is true that heterosexual persons and homosexual persons are equal. We speak of (and now acknowledge) marriage equality but these unions can not be equal to heterosexual unions.

Heterosexual unions replenish our species AS THEY WERE DESIGNED TO DO. Homosexual unions do not and can not.

"Disinterest in judging homosexuality is not an attitude government has coerced Americans into, it is the product of a free people’s informed knowledge."----Totally disagree--it's been forced by the courts and SCOTUS in particular. As far as treating gays with courtesy--if they stayed in the gay lifestyle and didn't try to overlap into heterosexual childraising,I could concur,but the two lifestyles don't mesh--and letting gays adopt or raise kids is a disastrous ,effed up idea for all the obvious reasons.Does society want impressionable kids living with two gays--viewing their behavior?Or the threat of sexual abuse by people who are NOT the kids biological parents.Plus the basic fact that gays do not reproduce (thankfully),means human evolution(which wants survival of the species)cannot possibly desire homosexuality as a lifestyle. I've worked with gays and as long as they didn't become overbearing with the gayness,I treated them as anyone else,but never associated with them after work(they all made it known they wanted more than a work relationship--and wanted to try to change my mind about heterosexuality). No thanks. Not only that,but here's the final point:I,as an adult,can decide not to "experiment" with gay sex propositions.Can the kids who live with gays say no at a young age?(and don't tell me it doesn't happen).---GR Anonymous

About Me

I am a dissident journalist, whose work has been published in dozens of daily newspapers, magazines, and journals in English, German, and Swedish, under my own name and many pseudonyms. While living in internal exile in New York, where I am whitelisted, I maintain NSU/The Wyatt Earp Journalism Bureau and some eight other blogs (some are distinctive but occasional venues, while others are mirrors), and also write for stout-hearted men such as Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor. Please hit the “Donate” button on your way out. Thanks, in advance.
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